OK, I know the GOP ideology drunkards with their mantra about job-killing taxes are exhibiting potentially catastrophic ignorance, mendacity, or both.

Having said that, what about this stunning performance by Jared Polis (D-CO) in the debate on the House floor today (July 28, 2011): 2½ minutes were yielded to Polis so he could present prepared remarks, equiped with a neatly-printed three-color chart showing yields and interest rates paid by countries rated AAA vs. AA. The bottom line in each column listed average interest rates as 3.75% for the countries rated AA (which is what could happen to the US as a result of this nonsense) vs. 2.98% for countries with a AAA rating (like the US has today).

In prepared remarks, with the poster facing everybody, Polis said that the difference between those interest rates is “1.75% … almost 2%,” and went on about how much this difference would amount to in interest payments on debts in the trillions over ten years.

With compound interest on that much over that long, even the difference between his “2%” and the actual .77% difference between the rates he was showing would be quite substantial!

How could anybody watching not have seen this? Apparently, the GOP Congressman who followed to answer him did not see it. I don’t know if anybody mentioned it after that.

Congress members have the privilege of correcting their floor speeches before they are permenantly published in the Congressional Record. I’ll be interested in seeing if this one does get corrected.

And these people are making the decisions about our nation’s finances?

Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled U.S. on Iraq

By Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; Page A01

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush and aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.”

This shows the importance for the Cheney Administration of having staff of the caliber of McClellan’s current successor Dana Perino, who is blissfully lacking in the consciousness that could lead to such a betrayal of the Administration’s deceitful and conniving ways.

Remember this (also as reported in the Washington Post)?:

Perino’s ‘Missile Crisis’ Confession . . . .

Appearing on National Public Radio‘s light-hearted quiz show “Wait, Wait . . . Don’t Tell Me,” which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis — and she didn’t know what it was.

“I was panicked a bit because I really don’t know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. “It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I’m pretty sure.”

So she consulted her best source. “I came home and I asked my husband,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Wasn’t that like the Bay of Pigs thing?’ And he said, ‘Oh, Dana.’ “

(See also: Sad Day for U of I schools)